Pages

Friday, July 29, 2011

It's come early people! I have friends coming round at the weekend and I will be doing some DIY, so instead of risk delay, I'm getting out this post today. I hope it lives up to expectations. I've not had so much anticipation over a blog post.

There's a contents page for this post. I've spread it over five blog pages to make it more manageable for you to read. Make sure you read this page first. There are links to the other pages when you need them, but just in case you don't want to search through the post for them, here they are. They will be at the bottom of every other page in this five post reading.

Here we start our journey in writing gamebooks. The overview of the blog posts in the series is here. By the end of part 2, we will be able to write 3 very short and simple (around 3-10 paragraphs) each one using a different method. By part 4, we will be able to write a gamebook that is a bit longer (25-50 paragraphs) that does not require a game system. By the end of part 8, we should be able to write a more complex gamebook with a game system and a few other add-ons.

I would love it if along the way, you give feedback with comments and or/email. Have I missed something out? Was there something I didn't explain too well? Do you want to hear more about something? Tell me.

Also, I would like to see the fruits of your labours and I will comment on them if you send them and post them if you like so that others can see and comment on them. The learning process will become a lot more productive if there are a lot of us that can bounce ideas around. All rights will stay with the authors.

This guy's idea was that
he needed smaller lamps.

So where do we start with a gamebook? We start with an idea. I have a post with some links to get ideas from, but we are going to start off super simple. We will follow the old saying write what you know. Lets start with a typical day.

So, think about a day you have lived in the past week and write down the following things about it.

Where did you go? What route did you take to get there? How was the journey?

Who did you speak to? What did you say to them? How did they respond?

Where did you get your lunch from? What did you eat? How was your meal?

I've picked three situations that people do most days - travel somewhere, talk to someone and eat lunch.

For each of those situations, I've also asked you how you dealt with that situation and finally, I've asked you what the consequences of your decision was.

So now we have three stories. We now have three very short books on aspects of our life.

Here are my answers:

Where did you go? I cycled to a little nearby village.

What route did you take to get there? I cycled via a farm.

How was your journey? It was very pleasant as it was a lovely summer's day.

What did you say to them? I said that I was feeling lazy and that I wanted a pizza for dinner as it was easy to cook.

How did they respond? She said that she was thinking the same thing.

Where did you get your lunch from? I got my lunch from the food in my kitchen.

What did you eat? I had a cheese sandwich with some leftover green salad.

How was your meal? It was OK although I would have liked it better with mayonnaise but I couldn't find any.

However, we don't have the game bit yet. What we need to do next is use out imaginations. For each of the three sets of questions, think of a different decision that you could have made for the second question (What route did you take to get there?, What did you say to them?, Why did you decide to eat that?) and then imagine what the answer to the third question might be based on your imagined action.

What did you say to them? I said that I wanted roast lamb with roast potatoes and other vegetables.

How did they respond? She said that there was not enough time to cook the lamb as she will be home in an hour. She will buy something from the supermarket on teh way home.

Where did you get your lunch from? I got my lunch from the food in my kitchen.

What did you eat? I had sausages and chips (aka french fries)

How was your meal? It was yummy but I am very full.

Got your answers done? Excellent. If you fancy making things a bit more complicated for yourself, why don't you come up with a third scenario to the questions along with the consequences or maybe, even a fourth or fifth.

Now we are going to start to turn them into plans for gamebooks. For each set of questions, we are going to use a different method. To read about each method, you need to click the link below. You can do them in any order you want*.

Right. Now that we've made the plans for a short gamebook but we don't want to write gamebooks about everyday stuff. We need ideas, so I'll give a list of places to find them as well as how to keep them. However, the list is getting quite long, so I've started a new blog page for ideas. You will find it here.

*So hang on. I need to make a decision and then turn to a new blog page based on that decision. Isn't that a bit like a..? Yes, it's a gamebook!

If you have not yet read the introduction, it will help you if you do. You can find it here.

The map method does exactly what it says on the tin. You draw all the possible locations you could go to and then link them up. You can also write descriptions of the places, who lives there, what items you could get from there and what might happen there.

Here are my answers to where I went, why I went there and how the journey was.

Where did you go? I cycled to a little nearby village.

What route did you take to get there? I cycled via a farm.

How was your journey? It was very pleasant as it was a lovely summer's day.

Where did you go? I cycled to a little nearby village.

What route did you take to get there? I cycled via a main road.

How was your journey? It was a nice day, but the journey was noisy.

And here is my map (I made it using text boxes, arrows and lines in powerpoint and then copying the images onto Paint):

Both routes end up at the same place although I go via two very different places. I could have also decided to go to a friend's house via a pleasant country lane. If I did that, I my map would look like this:

My maps are quite basic and look a bit like flow diagrams, but when we start to write larger gamebooks with big sites to explore, maps will be important.

If you would like to look at maps for existing gamebooks, you will find maps of dungeons from several Fighting Fantasy books here.

Maps only show us decisions we make to go to certain locations and give us brief descriptions of locations. They are good for gamebooks where you have to explore a particular area but eventually, you will have to take into account other decisions that the player will make. You can draw these diagrams like maps but they also contain other information such as what the player eats for lunch. You can find examples of such diagrams for existing gamebooks here (however, you will need a copy of the gamebooks mentioned as these diagrams only contain paragraph numbers.)

Here is a map of part of the dungeon from War of Deities part 1.

And here it is in a nice tidy digital format

I did not use all of the ideas from this map in my book. I thought that the gorgon was too easy to do, so I did a twist on the classic gorgon idea. I also left out the magic dagger, the cliff and the orc caves as I wanted to keep the book to within 400 paragraphs. By the time it got to the book, it became an encounter with an some orcs fighting a dwarf.

However, this is OK as I have the ideas stored away for when I may need them in future.

What did you say to them? I said that I wanted roast lamb with roast potatoes and other vegetables.

How did they respond? She said that there was not enough time to cook the lamb as she will be home in an hour. She will buy something from the supermarket on teh way home.

Here is the flow diagram for my decisions (I made it using text boxes, arrows and lines in powerpoint and then copying the images onto Paint)::

The decisions are in red boxes and the actions (either mine or my wife's) are in black boxes. I can expand this to have more decisions.

I can also have a situation where different decisions lead to the same results:

Flow diagrams are good for situations like conversations or deciding how to deal with a particular incident. When we make a bigger gamebook, we can see that it can be broken down into groups of flow diagrams. You can try several different ways of drawing a flow diagram. You can draw one 'timeline' at a time. You also need to think about points in the flow diagram where the decisions converge.

We can also include deciding to go to different places in the flow diagram (like mixing them with maps) for when you want to make a more ambitious gamebook. You can find examples of such diagrams for existing gamebooks here (however, you will need a copy of the gamebooks mentioned as these diagrams only contain paragraph numbers.)

For those of you who are familiar with fantasy settings, etc, here is a picture of an early flow diagram I made for Sharkbait's Revenge (some of these situations did not make it into the book). It is for the part where you explore the island you are trapped on. I split the book into several 'chapters', made a flow diagram for each chapter and then linked them together (I made a flow diagram of flow diagrams if you like)

And here it is written in word because my work is very messy.

The Get of island box does not mean that you get off the island when you get there - it means that you go onto the next flow diagram where you have to make decisions to get off the island. The 'decisions' are in red (I put the word decisions in quoatation marks because with some of them, you do not make decisions. Instead, you have to roll a die.) Notice how this flow diagram incorporates both going to different locations and decisions about how to act.

Once you have tried all three methods, we will write them up in gamebook format next week.

If you have not yet read the introduction, it will help you if you do. You can find it here.

So, impatient, eh? We fly by the eat of our pants. We're mavericks. We don't play by the rules, but by God, we get results.

Although there are advantages to planning a gamebook before you write it, there are also disadvantages. Those of us who have read Chris McReady's instructions to write your own gamebook (number 4 from Mark J. Popp's website - go to the bottom of thedownloads page of www.ffproject.com. This has some instructions on how to write a gamebook. You need to go to the amat file and the instructions are HTML files. ffinst4 is Chris's) know the advantages - planning can take up a lot of time and effort and by the time you've done the planning, you will be too tired and bored to actually write the thing.

So let's write a 3 paragraph gamebook based around what we had for lunch.

Where did you get your lunch from? I got my lunch from the food in my kitchen.

What did you eat? I had a cheese sandwich with some leftover green salad.

How was your meal? It was OK although I would have liked it better with mayonnaise but I couldn't find any.

Where did you get your lunch from? I got my lunch from the food in my kitchen.

What did you eat? I had sausages and chips (aka french fries)

How was your meal? It was yummy but I am very full.

In both cases, I start off in the kitchen, so that can be paragraph 1.

1

You are in the kitchen. You have a fridge and several cupboards full of food. You stomach starts to rumble and you look at your watch to see that it is lunch time. What will you have to eat?

I just wrote that off the top of my head. It's not Joe Dever, but I've made more progress than using the other two methods. How many options do I have?

I can choose between a cheese and salad sandwhich and sausage and chips. Right. That's paragraphs 2 and 3 sorted. Let's finish paragraph 1.

1

You are in the kitchen. You have a fridge and several cupboards full of food. You stomach starts to rumble and you look at your watch to see that it is lunch time. What will you have to eat? To have a cheese and salad sandwich, turn to 2. To have sausage and chips, turn to 3.

2

You slice up some bread, butter one of them and cut up some cheese to put in the slice. You then get the left over salad from the fridge and put it one your sandwich. You look for mayonnaise, but you cannot find any. You eat the sandwich. It is OK but you would rather have mayonnaise on it.

3

You get the sausages out of the fridge and a packet of oven chips from the freezer. You put the chips in the oven and grill the sausages. When they are done, you enjoy the meal with a bit of tomato ketchup although you are quite full after the meal so you feel a bit drowsy.

Since the gamebook is only three paragraphs, we could make it a tad longer. We could have the option of searching for the mayonnaise.

1

You are in the kitchen. You have a fridge and several cupboards full of food. You stomach starts to rumble and you look at your watch to see that it is lunch time. What will you have to eat? To have a cheese and salad sandwich, turn to 2. To have sausage and chips, turn to 3.

2

You slice up some bread, butter one of them and cut up some cheese to put in the slice. You then get the left over salad from the fridge and put it one your sandwich. You look for mayonnaise, but you cannot find any. If you search the bottom drawer of the fridge, turn to 4. If you eat the sandwich without the mayonnaise, turn to 5. If you forget about the sandwich and make sausages and chips, turn to 3.

3

You get the sausages out of the fridge and a packet of oven chips from the freezer. You put the chips in the oven and grill the sausages. When they are done, you enjoy the meal with a bit of tomato ketchup although you are quite full after the meal so you feel a bit drowsy.

4

You open the drawer to find the squeezy bottle of mayonnaise. You squirt it onto your sandwich and enjoy your tasty cheese and salad sandwich with mayonnaise.

5

You eat the sandwich. It is OK but you would rather have mayonnaise on it.

So there we go. A three paragraph gamebook written in no time. This method is best when it is written for short, simple gamebooks (possibly up to 100 paragraphs) but if you have longer gamebooks or more complicated gamebooks, then making flow diagrams or maps will be advisable. However, using this method, we have already come up with a workable gamebook while people who used the other two methods have a diagram.

Once you have tried all three methods, we will write them up in gamebook format next week.

If you have not yet read the introduction, it will help you if you do. You can find it here.

First of all, we have loads of ideas every day. Tons of them. I second Andrew Wright's advice from Fighting Fantazine 4 to carry a notepad and pen or pencil around. I carry a notepad around with me all the time. Now that I write every good idea down, I realise that we all have many many ideas every day, but if we don't put them anywhere, they may get lost in the aether. Knowing this, I obsessively write down any ideas I have.

What would have happened if I
had packed the crossbow?

When you have an idea about an adventure, think about what the player could do and what the consequences of their actions are. Think about what would plausably happen in the situation. A gamebook can have its own set of laws but we stick to them to suspend disbelief. Then plan it out using one of the three methods above. Next week, we will turn it into gamebook form.

And because pirates
are cool.

Here are a few gamebooks I have written and where I got the ideas from:

I'm a fan of H,P. Lovecraft (you can find all of his works here and there are podcasts based on his works here and here) and his cosmic horror stories can provide lots of inspiration, especially since his stories leave a lot of unanswered questions.

Role playing websites

A website called Roleplaying Tips has hundreds of newsletters on roleplaying which may help with gamebook ideas. Issue 14 has a list of books that will give you ideas for any setting.

I like going to museums and taking pictures of artefacts and reading stories about them. They can be about al kinds of wierd and wonderful things. I found this museum in Spain which is all about torture.

These websites has lots of free resources that can be used for inspiration.

Online generators

The internet seems to have a generator for pretty much anything. Seventh Sanctum has a story generator for fantasy, modern, scifi or free for all. It also has a generator for characters, settings and writing amongst many other things.

Chaotic Shiny has many many generators including plot/writing generators.

Donjon has generators for fantasy and scifi that are more RPG scenario based but they can also be used for inspiration.

I love this site. If you search for a book, a film, a play or any other work, you will find a list of tropes that make it up. In this sense, a trope is not what a trope is usually considered to be but in this ontext, it is a story device. We all know about tropes. If we know that the unnamed security guard in Star Trek will be dead in the next five minutes, then we know a trope. There are many many other tropes and we can use them in our gamebooks. There is even a TVtropes page for gamebooks.

Real life

Sometimes you can get plenty of strange and inspiring stories just by keeping your eyes and ears open. You never know where they will turn up.

For example, a few months ago, when I was getting my hair cut, the hairdresser told me about a Christmas he had where his dad bought a live eel to eat except it kept on thrashing around and trying to escape. After a struggle with this eel, my hairdresses dad managed to cut its head off. It stopped, but then the body started thrashing around. I thought that would be a great idea for a monster in a fantasy or horror gamebook.

The blogosphere

There are plenty of great blogs to do with RPGs and gaming. Some of them have free resources. Here are some:

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Hi all! In an attempt to clean up my blog page, I've moved the myriad of widgets on the side of my blog to new pages.

I've also made some pages with reviews on them as they seem to be the most popular searches on the internet. If you quickly want reviews, just look at the pages. I accidentally posted one of the pages as a post and then deleted it, so there may be a broken link on your dashboard pages.

I'm also going to post up a links page. I'll be working on these pages over the next few weeks.

I will make a how to write a gamebook page as I start releasing the relevant posts.

If there's something you'd like to see on a page, then please leave a comment.

It has taken almost a year, but I have finally got round to writing about actually how to write a gamebook. When I started this blog I had no idea that one could write so much about gamebooks. However it seems that there is actually plenty to write about.

However, enough with looking back. That's what I'll be doing on August 28th when I do a post of how the blog has come along in the past year. With the exception of August the 28th, all of my Sunday posts between this one and the 2nd October will be about how to write a gamebook. The titles of the posts will be:

31st July 2011: Thinking of a plot (and a few more plots).

Gamebooks are not just about one story; they are about many stories and how they could play out. It's like creating several alternate timelinesfor your particular story. What kind of choices could you give the reader? What is the best way of planning all of these events and possible choices? What conclusions do you want to give to your reader? Do you plan this all out at once or start from the beginning and see where it takes you?

7th August 2011: Splitting the plot into paragraphs.

Now that we have all of your 'timelines' sorted, we need to write out the paragraphs that a gamebook is split into. How many paragraphs should you have? When should you tell someone to turn to a new paragraph? How long should your paragraphs be? How should you arrange your paragraphs in your book? How should you randomise the paragraphs if you want them to be random?

What genre will your gamebook be? Fantasy, modern or science fiction? Where will it be set - a dungeon, a castle, on a spaceship, in your mind? A gamebook can be set in any place, any time or any world. You can even have a gamebook where you travel across time and space . What kind of tropes could you have in each setting? Is your gamebook based on a single site that you could show with a map or do you have to plan different events in your adventure?

21st August 2011: Characters and descriptions

What makes for good gamebook characters? What should you describe about the location that the player is in or the characteristics of the new inkeeper or hostile orc? What kind of stock characters appear in gamebooks? When do you need a deep interesting character and when do you just need an orc with a sword that will be dead in three dice rolls time?

After these first posts, then you could produce a short (about 25-50 paragraphs) gamebook much like Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks where there are no stats, no inventory lists and all you have to think about is writing the paragraphs and working out the choices. Then you could send them to me for me to comment on, send them to me to put on the blog for myself and other people to comment on or keep the book and feel the pride of having written a gamebook.

28th Agust 2011: Year in review

This will have nothing to do with the How to write Gamebook series, but it will give us all time to write a choose your own adventure style gamebook and send it to me for me to comment on or put it on the blog for everyone to comment on.

Week beginning 4th September 2011

If anyone writes a Choose Your Own Adventure style gamebook, they can send it to me and I will comment on it, or they could send it to me to ask me to put it on the blog for others to see and comment on it. All rights will still stay with the author.

4th September 2011: Using a game system.

We now get into using an RPG style system in a gamebook. The basic rule is that the system should serve the plot, not the other way around. What things could you measure in a system? Why do we need them? Do we need a randomised system? How simple or complicated do we dare make the system? When do systems go wrong?

11th September 2011: Advanced stuff with numbers.

This is for those of use who have used a game system where the character has ability scores and/or some things are decided randomly. How do you make sure that your system is fair? What do you consider if you use dice? Are you willing to put extra time into playtesting the book's system?

18th September 2011: What is wrong with these examples?

This post will be about playtesting a book and the common errors that gamebooks contain with examples from other gamebooks.

25th September 2011: Weird and wonderful things to try in your gamebook.

Some gamebook authors have tried all kinds of things. Now that we can write a gamebook with an RPG system, how could we go further? What about the use of secret paragraphs, puzzles or the use of maps?

2nd October 2011: Notes from my own gamebook writing.

In this post, I will write some notes about my own gamebooks. I will scan in some of my planning notes and I will also write my own critiques of gamebooks I ahve written.

Week beginning 9th October 2011: Gamebook submissions for comments.

Just like the week beginning 4th September, if you would like to submit a gamebook for me to comment on, then I will. You could also submit the gamebook for me to post onto my blog or you could post a link for others to see. The difference is that your gamebook can all kinds of crazy things in it - 3d20 rolls,page numbers that aren't in numerical order or every good decision turns bad. Just like before, all rights remain with the author.

So that's what we have to look forward to over the next few weeks, but if you want to do some preliminary reading, here are some other how to write a gamebook posts.

There are more links that I have been reminded of (and should have thought of in the first place)

First of all, Andrew Wright reminded me of the treasure chest of amateur Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that is www.ffproject.com has an old website by Mark J. Popp archived on the bottom of its downloads page. This has some instructions on how to write a gamebook. You need to go to the amat file and the instructions are HTML files named ffinst1, ffinst2, ffinst3, ffinst4 and ffinst5.

Also (and how could I have forgotten this one considering I've written for it?), Fighting Fantazine (complete with blog) has a series of how to write your own andventure, written by Andrew Wright. There are two parts at the moment. The first is in issue 4 and the second is in issue 5. The third part will be in issue 8 (thankyou, Alex.)

However, it you haven't read all of the issues, there are six so far, each one with great interviews, articles and Fighting Fantasy adventures. You can get all of them from here.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

The first of many Fabled Lands source books has been released. This one concerns the rules for character creation and role playing. It also has details on the city of Yellowport, the sulphur choked city that most players of the original solo gamebook series would find themselves in.

The RPG introduces new rules to the system that the gamebooks never had. There are two new characteristics - muscle and intelligence, two new classes, skills (abilities that all characters could possess), powers (abilities that only players of certain classes could possess), rules for multiclassing and spell lists.

The system still retains its simplicity whilst being incredibly versatile in terms of character creation. Since its world is based on the sandbox gamebook series, the flavour of the classes and the description of many aspects of the Fabled Lands - its history, its geography, its religions, its animals and monsters and its civilisations - are all immensely detailed. Finally, it contains an in depth look at Yellowport and some of its personalities. Hopefully, these descriptions of this rich and varied lands that is the Fabled Lands will continue in its future sourcebooks.

Fabled Lands was a series of gamebooks written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thompson. The idea behind the books was to create what is now known as a sandbox setting. Twelve gamebooks were planned but only six were published.

I found the sourcebook a very easy and interesting read. Game information is presented in a clear systematic way so it is pretty easy to find on a page. The contents page is very detailed, listing all of the headings in the book, so it is easy to see what the chapter is about. It is also easy to see which chapters you may want to miss out if you are anxious to start a game and don't want to read what the setting is all about.

The game rules are very simple but they are still very well explained and examples are given for combat (the only vaguely complicated part of the rules.) Those of us who have already read the Fabled Lands gamebooks will already have a good knowledge of the background of Harkuna and the basic rules. You will just need to learn the new rules made for the RPG. Also, those of us who have used a D20 system will find some skills and rules familiar. Those of use who have read both could start up a quest or two in next to no time.

One of the cons in the books is that it uses terms before they are defined and that it lacks an index or glossary for you to look them up.
This means that you will have to read all of the rules before you get a good idea of how they work.

Aesthetics

The map of Harkuna (it is black and white in the source book)
This is taken from the Fabled Lands Blog.

I'm the sort of person who just wants to get the information, but aesthetics are important to a book, so I will give my inexpert opinion. The book itself is about the size and shape of A4 (it is a bit shorter and a bit wider.) It is softback with a colour illustration on the cover and black and white illustrations inside. There are a few full page illustrations of scenes in rooms and bits of buildings. There are plenty of smaller illustrations though, including pictures of a member of each profession, a picture of each monster (unfortunately, they are behind their description so we can't see them in their full glory) and other scenes. I prefer the sketches to the computer generated images, but that's a personal preference.

The double page map (above) is both very detailed and very pretty to look at. I enjoy looking at maps, especially world maps and I thought this was the best piece of art in the book.

Now I will go through the chapters of the book and what they cover.

Chapter 1 - Character Creation

A character sheet

Character creation is a five step process:

1) Choose your character's background.

There are several backgrounds that you can choose from with a short description of what your life was like in that particular background.

Choosing your background gives you access to a skill or some equipment or money.

2) Generate your character's description.

Here you randomly generate the physical description of your character - age, height and build. Extreme values have a small effect on your stats. For example, being extremely small gives you +1 on hiding tests and -1 on jumping tests.

You also have a good and bad personality trait to prevent you character being a set of numbers on a page. Role playing to them gets you extra experience points.

Those who have played with the Fabled Lands system will be familiar with all of the abilities apart from intelligence and muscle which sound quite self explanatory.

Your stats are determined by rolling eight six sided dice and assigning a value to each of your abilites. You may re-roll if the total value of the dice is less than 20.

4) Generate your character's stamina value.

Roll 1d6 and add 6. This is your character's stamina value. If it reaches 0 or less then every round, the character must roll 1 die. On the roll of a 1, they die.

5) Choose a profession.

There are now eight professions in the Fabled Lands RPG. Each one has a primary ability assigned to them. That is, you can only be part of the profession if that ability is 5 or higher. The professions with their primary ability values in brackets are - barbarian (muscle), druid (intelligence), mage (magic), priest (sanctity), rogue (thievery), troubador (charisma), warrior (combat) and wayfarer (scouting).

Professions get a range of skills that they can choose from and a list of powers that are unique to each class.

The professions are flavourful and there is a description of how they fit into the Fabled Lands. This is better than having a generic fighter.

Making a character is quite a quick, simple but versatile and flavourful process. It is made more versatile by the fact that when you advance rank, you can either get a new power or train in a new ability. You also get more skill points and you could also take up a new profession.

Chapter 2 - Skills

Those of us who have played D20 will find this chapter very familiar. There is a list of 30 skills, the ability they require and the professions that make use of them. There are simple modifier tables for the skills.

The skills section is quite simple and straightforward in the description and mechanics of the skills.

Chapter 3 - Spells and sorcerers

In the Fabled Lands gamebooks, you did not have to choose from a list of spells. Instead, you were given the option of using your magic skill in the sections of the book.

The RPG has produced eighteen schools of magic, each with three spells although the number of schools and the number of spells in a school can always be increased. Some of the schools of magic are: aeromancy, beastology, divination, healing and telepathy.

Spells are cast by performing a test against magic with a difficulty set by the spell. You can expand on some spells such as the duration or the number of people that they can effect if you increase the difficulty needed to cast the spell. However, you cannot cast a spell with a difficulty higher than 10 + your rank

Chapter 4 - Equipment

Here, you find a list of weapons (both ranged and close combat.) Each weapon is given a combat bonus value, a cost an encumbrance value and its type (is it basic or military - some professions are only trained in basic weapons.) Ranged weapons are given a short, medium and long range.

Chapter 5 - Combat

Combat is quite simple to learn. You roll 2d6, add it to your combat value then subtract your opponent's defence value to calculate how much damage you have done. This was how it was done in the gamebooks.

There are some additions to combat rules in the RPG. Every combatant now has a strike value which is determined by rolling 2d6 and applying modifiers (for example, small light weapons increase strike value whilst large cumbersome ones decrease it.)
This is the order of who takes their actions.

Each combatant also has a number of action points (usually 2) per round. The chapter then describes some actions and how many action points they cost. All of the actions are pretty standard and anyone familiar with D20 combat will recognise a great deal. For example, moving costs 1 action point, striking costs 1 action point and charging costs 2 action points.

Chapter 6 - Deities and religion

Here you will find a description of the Gods of Harkuna, how you become and initiate into their religion and the powers that priests of each particular god can obtain.

Chapter 7 - City services

This short chapter gives you the details involved in buying, maintaining, manning and sailing the different types of boats and the ins and outs of being a merchant - the price fluctuations of cargo and the elements of banking, investments and buying a house.

These rules are similar to the rules in the Fabled Lands gamebooks, but they are more detailed so, as with the rest of the rules, even if you know the gamebook rules well, it will do you good to read the RPG rules.

Chapter 8 - Harkuna

One of the great strengths of Fabled Lands is the detailed World in which it takes place. This had to be created due to the fact that the premise of the gamebooks was that you could explore every corner of Harkuna.

I admit that I'm the sort of person who cares more for gameplay and stats than the mythos of a fantasy world. However, I found reading about the history and geography of the Fabled Lands very fulfilling. The world map in this chapter is extremely detailed and well drawn. The descriptions of the different countries are very informative and evocative.

Chapter 9 - For the gamesmaster

Once again the writers of the Fabled Lands RPG make it clear that they haven't created it for 'roll playing' and bog standard dungeon crawls, but that the gamesmaster should be there to bring the world to life. There are tips on creating a quest and story telling which will help do this.

The chapter then goes into awarding experience and common situations such as listening, bargaining and eating. Situations have a difficulty rating set to them which the gamesmaster can use as a guideline. There are also rules for weather and sea travel in case the players want to take up being merchants or want to explore the Violet Ocean.

At the end of the chapter, there is an in depth description of the city of Yellowport complete with statistics of important personalities who live there. I anticipate that the Sokara sourcebook comes out

Chapter 10 - Monsters and enemies

Harkuna is a human centric world where intelligent non humans such as faerie inhabit out of the way places. The book does not encourage any race but human for the PCs (it does not give any option to have a non human character in the character creation chapter) but it does give stats for several faerie folk which a smart DM can extrapolate from (however, this will not be in keeping with the flavour of the Fabled Lands)

Each monster is given a threat level, but the book points out that it is to only compare the monsters with each other as different characters with different powers will find different monsters challenging.

The chapter contains some Fabled Lands favourites such as the Scorpion Man and the Ratman. It also mentions that ghouls can be repelled with a mixture of iron and salt (a reference to the quest in The War Torn Kingdom.)

Appendix - Lair of the Ratmen

This is a short quest adapted from a quest in The War Torn Kingdom where the characters have to descend into the sewers in Yellowport to kill the king of the Ratmen because they are stealing from the merchants' guild. It is a good example of how a quest could look.

Conclusion

The Fabled Lands RPG is simple, versatile and easy to learn with good explanations of rules. It gives you everything you need to start a simple quest. If you have read the Fabled Lands gamebooks, you could use these rules to adapt some scenarios from the gamebooks in order to run as RPG quests. This could keep you going until September when the Sokara sourcebook (based on The War Torn Kingdom) is released. I am looking forward to it as I enjoy reading about the world of Harkuna. I believe the reason why I like this world so much is because I could actually go to every obscure corner of it in the gamebook. Fabled Lands has plenty of source material to work from and it can be used to create endless quests.

This is the second review of an RPG sourcebook and I intend to review the Lone Wolf RPG in the future. Please tell me if I have missed something out, or written too much. Should I go through every chapter? Should I list good and bad points? What do you look for in an RPG review?